Fixed Point
by sistem
Summary: It's a long way from Tokyo's Daughter to one half of Gipsy Danger. Mako Mori learns to look forward.
1. Chapter 1

Bits of dialogue are lifted from Pacific Rim: Year Zero, mostly the dialogue in the plane. 

* * *

The adoption is not easy.

There are questions about remaining family members (none try to claim her – only her family's property) and its legality (Stacker Pentecost was reminded that the US Attorney General _does not handle this kind of shit, find a goddamn adoption attorney who's willing to muddle through international adoption laws. Jesus, Stack, shouldn't you be in recovery?_).

There's a potential shit storm bubbling beneath the story of Tokyo's Daughter being taken by a foreigner (the photo of a small child in a bright blue coat, holding her red shoe, standing in front of Tokyo and Onibaba destroyed gains traction with each coverage of the attack), but nobody follows up on the girl and it takes Stacker Pentecost weeks before he finds her name then find the orphanage for the children displaced by the attack. It's months before she leaves with him.

Mako Mori is a quiet girl dressed in clothes the orphanage could spare – a faded pink dress that may have been red before its fiftieth wash. She is barefoot. Later, the orphanage will hand him the clothes she wore on the day of the attack in a plastic bag, blue coat folded neatly under her red shoes.

The first thing she says to him, in carefully separated syllables, is, "Coyote Tango."

One half of Coyote Tango dips his head low in response and replies, "Miss Mori." 

* * *

She grows her hair, longer than it's ever been. Shapeless and with no real direction, hair seems so inconsequential now. At first, it's a matter of accessibility and convenience – who has time to find a salon in the ruins of Tokyo?

When it reaches past her shoulders, she realizes it's the last thing her mother touched of her. A kiss on the crown of her head, "Run, Mako. Run."

Her father was still in the ruins of the hospital.

So she keeps it long.

It's a strange mix of denial and commemoration.

Stacker Pentecost understands entirely.

When it's time to move on from the Tokyo Shatterdome, he offers to take her to Tanegashima to collect anything from her childhood home. Everything is in her name, her father and mother made sure of it.

She asks him in Japanese, too tired to have a conversation in English, "What am I suppose to do?"

He puts away the plans for the Jaeger Academy in Kodiak and looks at her and her overgrown hair. "You pick your things up and you rebuild. You move forward but you never forget."

A few days later, she'll ask him for a haircut and she'll say, "Like my mother did, straight across, please."

(Later, years later, a journalist that almost broke up the brightest candidates in the Jaeger program will ask him about family. And he will tell her, "_Family isn't _**always**_ a matter of blood. Sometimes it's something we build. It's a decision to care about someone else. It's the opposite of loneliness_.") 

* * *

She follows him to Alaska. He offers her four different international schools in Japan and five more scattered around the world. She refuses, bows low, and asks to see the new Mark III blueprints.

She followed him everywhere even before that.

She sat in a small conference room as a man with even more pins on his lapel dubbed him Marshal Stacker Pentecost. The night before, he explained the promotion, what Marshal meant in the PPDC. He explained that it was an honor and a reward for his work. Her eyes lit up and she scrambled for a plastic sword wedged between her bed and her desk. She said, pointing down to the ground, "Kneel."

He raised a brow to her and she added, after a pause, "Please?"

He sighed a big sigh and did so while she stood on her bed, not quite looming over him. She touched the sword to his right shoulder, then the left. "_Kishi_."

A knight. He bowed low and said, "_Mako-hime_."

He made no mentions of metharocins and kept any disappointment out of his voice.

(Later, in a plane to Kodiak Island, she will ask, "_You don't have to drive a Jaeger?_"

And he will say, "_Not anymore._") 

* * *

For the first few months, they seem to be stuck in a limbo.

She doesn't know what to call him.

She tries to say _otōsan_, but the word won't come out, her eyes looking for a different face. She remembers how the rebellious teenagers on her American shows would call their parents by their first names, but all she can see is her mother's disapproving face. Besides, the man who saved her deserved more respect than that.

So she avoids it. She avoids it until it eats her up a little inside.

What does she call the man who, when he saw her awake at 3 in the morning, pretended to stretch his arms above his head and declared that, _that was enough paper work for tonight and, if she wasn't too busy herself, would she mind to keep him company while he watched some movies_? Or the man that let her fill in the Jaegers in her coloring books with shaky lines that looked suspiciously like details from Jaeger blueprints? Pentecost-san makes her frown with distaste and sometimes she wishes she knew who he was like everybody else seems to when they walk down corridors in his offices, men and women saluting or giving his shoulder a firm pat and saying, "Stacks."

By the time they get to Alaska, she tries to put it out of her mind because he didn't seem to mind or notice her dilemma.

He lets her sit in his already cramp office when he has meetings to go to or, as Herc Hansen liked to say, recruits to menace. (Herc Hansen is another question to be answered – too friendly and around far too much for her to dismiss as someone she was unfamiliar with, but she doesn't live with him so that problem is infinitely less pressing.) She asks about how Jaegers worked and he answers them as clearly as he can and when she struggles to understand something, he pulls out print outs to show her, _here, this is how it started and here, this is the progression, do you see it? That's how _that_ became _this_ and that's how _this_ will become _that.

She nods because she does and it reminds her so much of when her own father explained how to fold steel, how the heat of the fire was a test – the strong ones bend, but do not burn up.

Which brings her back to her dilemma.

She remembers one of the films he offered to her on one of her sleepless nights and finds it appropriate. How do you solve a problem like Stacker Pentecost?

Later, he is visibly agitated by something and she refrains from asking too many questions. Herc Hansen finds her in his office, alone, comparing the Mark II and Mark III blueprints, tacking on small, shiny stickers on the differences she can find in the wiring. Yesterday, she did the exterior.

She's swinging her feet, barely grazing the ground with the tips of her shoes, from the big chair usually reserved for the owner of the office. Hansen opens the door while still knocking and sticks his head in. His mouth starts forming a different name when he sees her. He looks at her gravely and says, "Marshal Mori."

She may be unsure of what to call Hansen, but she knows this game. She shifts so she's kneeling on the chair, giving her some height. It swivels a little and she has to grip the table to stay still, but she replies, with as much weight as she can, "Ranger Hansen."

He stands at attention and salutes her, like he does the men with even more authority than the Marshal.

He grins at her and she smiles back. He occupies the chair she usually does when the Marshal was in the office and he looks over the blueprints. He taps at an unmarked corner of it and says, "Rerouted one of the exhausts on the Mark III. Pilots kept complaining the Conn-Pod smelled like gas."

She nods and carefully places a purple star over the area. "Did it bother you?"

Hansen looks contemplative, "Problem about the Drift, yeah? You never really know who's smelling what when. That is to say, I love the smell of gasoline in the morning. It smells like victory."

Mako looks at him strangely and he laughs, "Where's the old man at?"

"The Kwoon. There's been… a problem, a fight between two of the pilots. I believe he is 'menacing' them." She gives him a pointed look and he laughs harder.

He stands, creaking at the knees, and knocks lightly on the table, "Well, it's past his and the Becket's bedtime, why don't we go disturb 'em?"

She shouldn't, but she nods. The Kwoon isn't a place she gets to visit often. It's usually crowded, either with candidates training or with spectators watching a compatibility test. It's easy to get underfoot.

It still holds a certain amount of mystique to it, like the Jaeger hangar did before she started spending time around the crew to pass time. The Jaegers were impressive, but easily understood. It was a machine, no matter how massive and grand and beautiful. There are (massive and grand and beautiful) blueprints and detailed schematics on every gear and wire.

The pilots are another thing.

For all the advancements in the field, Drifting is still a mystery. There are too many unspoken things between pilots that never leave the Drift and too many variables to ever guarantee compatibility. There is only trial and error and hope that the next one works.

And the Kwoon Combat Room is where it starts.

Every Kwoon Room is virtually identical; matted floors, open space, weapons stored to the side. Alaska is no different from Lima to Sydney. The only difference between all those rooms is that Stacker Pentecost is standing in the middle of this one, looking severely unimpressed by two retreating figures who were walking and talking in a way that Mako has seen countless times from two people coming out of the Kwoon. _They are Drift compatible._

Hansen nudges her in and Stacker turns to them. His face is still pinched and he says, "Children. The both of them."

Mako goes over to the weapons, carefully adjusting a skewed hanbō. She can feel both men watching her. She hears Hansen reply, "Well they are."

She adjusts a sabre so it sat more securely on its stand. Hansen continues, "And they're getting younger. You heard 'em."

Mako has. The PPDC is considering lowering the enlisting age. Younger candidates prove to be easier to find matches for compatibility. She's read the reports (the publics ones and the not so public ones) and they all agree: youth translates to mental malleability and (ideally) less emotional trauma; it would be foolish and wasteful not to explore such avenues.

She turns and finds both men staring at each other, a continuation of an unspoken debate from earlier. Hansen cracks his neck and gives the Marshal a lazy salute, "Well, it's past my bedtime and I got a flight to catch."

He gives Mako a proper salute and she returns a bow.

There's still a pair of hanbō by the Marshal's feet and he picks it up. Mako straightens, ready to catch them and place them back with the others, just like all the other times he's tossed it to her.

He stretches his neck and examines the sticks. He asks, in Japanese, "_Did your father teach you how to handle weapons_?"

Something tightens in her. It's not that he never tries to talk about her parents, it's that she's been avoiding it. She answers likewise, "_I was too young. He taught me kata_."

"_We'll run through that. Then we'll move onto the weapons_."

She bows, "_Hai, sensei_."

(On the same plane to Kodiak, she had asked him what he would do in Alaska, if not drive Jaegers. He told her, "_Teach people to drive Jaegers, I suppose_."

"_Oh_," she looked out the window to the new Jaeger Academy. She asked him, "_Will you teach_ me?"

He told her, "_Maybe one day_."

It tasted like hope.) 

* * *

I tried reconciling the novelization timeline and the movie's timeline and NEVER AGAIN. But hey! Is the Pacific Rim bug still gnawing at the cockles of your heart? Come commiserate with me tumblr! I go as borncareful over yonder. Or just watch me continue to spiral about this movie to depths lower than the Mariana Trench!


	2. Chapter 2

Mako's thirteen and so many months and she sends in her application to the PPDC Jaeger Academy. Where it asks, in the event of her acceptance, which Academy she'd prefer to attend, she numbers the locations, from greatest to least, by the Marshal's deployment schedule. Anchorage at number one – Kodiak is near enough, nearer than Hong Kong at any rate – and Tokyo at the bottom.

It's not a secret she's applying, she and the Marshal has spoken about it extensively – over dinner and sleepless nights, during her training in the Kwoon and the quiet moments in his office, looking over jaeger blueprints. He started training her for this, so she can be ready, so she can be the best.

He doesn't try to stop her.

The day she gets accepted, she goes to every convenience store in the town by the base looking for a very specific shade of hair dye. She gives up when all they offer are a range of brown and blonde and gives in and spends her stipend on a salon another town over.

She picks the chunks of hair framing her face, showing the stylist how where she'd like the color. The bleach makes her a little dizzy, something she'll eventually get used to, and she flips through the color palate.

She picks a color that's crass and bold. 'Kaiju Blue' is gauche and perfect. She makes sure to order more and the stylist gives her a small look when the address she gives is the Jaeger Academy in Kodiak.

Later in the Kwoon, the Marshal is waiting for her and she bows, "Sensei."

The blue streaks fall forward when she bows, presenting itself to the Marshal.

He raises a brow a bit. "And how was your day, Miss Mori?"

She picks up the corresponding eskrima sticks by his feet and spins it a bit, "Productive."

He gives a non-committal nod, "Hmm. Little dizzy perhaps?"

She wonders if he can smell the peroxide. She grins a little bit, maybe she is a little dizzy, but it's not from the bleach.

A corner of his mouth lifts a little and he shakes his head, "I never knew how Tamsin got used to the bloody smell."

She flips her hair a little bit and looks at his shaved head, "Perhaps you should try it."

He laughs and so does she.

"Are you ready?"

She gets in position. "Hai, Sensei."

In four days time, she will only know his as Marshal Pentecost, fighting every instinct to call him Sensei. But in this moment, as she blocks his attacks, she is content.

* * *

There are irregularities in her simulations.

She completes them perfectly – reasonable collateral damage, clean kills with no excessive kaiju blood spilling the simulated city streets. Perfect. The only person near her record is Chuck Hansen and she still has four simulations on him.

Her connection with the Marshal isn't widespread public knowledge, but anyone with a high enough pay grade knows – anyone with a high enough pay grade would've been one of the people who questioned the adoption. They know what happened in Tokyo; they know who she is, even if the world never bothered to find out. It's an open secret to the top brass, but, they tell themselves, _there's too much potential in the Mori girl_.

By her seventeenth drop (and subsequent kill), the irregularities are becoming common. There's a spike in the otherwise consistent readings, suggesting a slip in her control. A slip that can start a landslide if she were drifting with another person. A slip that did.

By her thirty-fourth drop and thirty-fourth kill, the irregularities are a trend.

Maybe, on someone else, a different person, it could just be adrenaline or exhaustion. But she's not. She was the girl chased by Onibaba in the streets of Tokyo after losing her parents moments before.

By her fiftieth simulation, she gets a summons.

She supposes that they think it kind to have the Marshal speak to her instead of the review board.

She knows what's coming. She's seen the readings – kept trying to avoid repeating it, which only resulted in an even bigger spike.

The Marshal tells her, "It's concerning."

"I can get better."

"This isn't about getting better."

"The Psych staff cleared me!"

"This decision is still up to me."

At some point they've switched to Japanese without Mako noticing. It's not something that's happened in a while.

"Then what would have been the point of this? What would be the point of me?"

"Mako," his voice is stern in a way that hasn't been since she tried to continue training on a sprained ankle. "Your control is slipping in the simulation. The risk of a destabilized handshake on the field is too high. You didn't live just to die in battle. Until you learn that, this isn't going to work. There are more ways to honor you family than being in a Conn-Pod."

"One more. Just give me one more chance."

Her fifty-first drop becomes her fifty-first kill. The Marshal is there, monitoring the readings and she doesn't need to see them to know.

When she passes him, she can't meet his eyes, so she bows low, the weight of the disappointment heavy. His hand is on her shoulder the moment she's up. "Mako."

He's right, though. Her memories could destabilize any neural handshake she manages to forge with someone. Maybe it'll work the first time, or even the second time, but it'll be like waiting for a time bomb.

"Things change. Maybe one day."

It tastes like disappointment.

* * *

Her first year as a Ranger, Gipsy Danger turns up on the shores of Anchorage, miles from the contact point with Knifehead, with a left arm hanging in bits, a hole on the right side of the Conn-Pod, and one pilot short.

The pieces of the Jaeger and Raleigh Becket are flown back to the Shatterdome.

It comes out that Becket managed to pilot Gipsy Danger back to shore after finishing off Knifehead, all this after having his brother ripped from the Conn-Podd, disconnecting the handshake prematurely.

The entire base is tense for the two days Raleigh Becket slips in and out of consciousness. When he wakes up, he refuses to sign a waiver to be studied. There's only one other pilot that's been able to pilot a jaeger solo, but Becket's body isn't trying to kill him from radiation poisoning.

Gipsy Danger is to be retired to San Francisco with the other destroyed jaegers.

A day after Medical clears him physically fit, Mako watches Becket try to leave the hangar in the middle of the night, duffle bag over his shoulder, with a wild look no one's willing to meet.

She wonders if there's an Oblivion Bay for pilots.

* * *

She argues with the Marshal about a lot of things, in private and (semi) public spheres. If there's a debate to be had, they have it. Respect, after all, doesn't mean submission.

When Chuck Hansen becomes the youngest pilot in PPDC history she reserves the Kwoon on the Marshal's least busiest day and knocks on his office door after his last meeting.

She bows low when he opens the door. He's still in his uniform, pressed and neat, and she stands before him in a tank top and loose pants. He takes one look at her, bows back and says, "Give me an hour."

After fifty-five minutes, they both stand outside the Kwoon, waiting for the last match to end. It's not a strange sight, Mako Mori and the Marshal training in the mats. People know well enough to stay out of their way.

At the hour, the room is cleared except for them, both in their training gear, picking up a hanbō by the wall. Stacker spins his by his wrist and Mako stretches her neck. They stroll to the middle of the room and he says, "Heard the news, have you."

She gets into position, her stick extended, "I'm as good as Chuck Hansen."

She gives him a pointed look that said, _Better._

He moves into the starting position, then, in a series of movements, he arrives four steps to her left and taps her ribs lightly.

"Point."

He gives _her_ a pointed look that said, _We'll see._

Sometime after the irregularities in her simulation readings were considered _concerning_ but before _alarming_, someone gets the idea to test the two youngest students for drift compatibility.

Chuck was in the class below her even though they're the same age. He'd never admit it, but he played catch up with her for most of his career during the Academy.

Mako was quiet and kept to herself and nice enough to help you if you asked for it, but had sim scores that nobody was able to scratch. Chuck was an asshole who knew how good he was and hassled the ground crew more often than not. When people argued about the lowered enlisting age of the Academy, the debate boiled down to, '_Have you _seen_ the Mori girl_?' which is easily deflected by, '_Yeah_, but _the Hansen boy_.'

Their EKGs matched up and they were taught to fight by men who are compatible. Most importantly, they had history. From Lima to Hong Kong, they are both familiar faces to each other. They treaded the same hallways and got kicked out of the same hangars, but they never stayed in one place long enough to be anything but suspicious of each other.

The Kwoon fight went fine until it didn't. Ranger Hansen and Marshal Pentecost were present for the match and it ended with a sharp call of their names just as Mako retaliated with a swift and hard hit to Chuck's ribs after he knocked the air out of her with a hit to the gut.

Statistics say they're compatible; angry with something to prove, but compatible.

So they hooked themselves up in the simulator for two with the whole world watching. She heard the Marshal's voice, "Prepare for neural handshake."

They looked at each other, eager and still suspicious of each other. The AI replied, "Neural handshake, initiating."

They're pulled in. It started with things they share –

_– dinner at someone's off base apartment, both of you tearing up the vegetables, kneeling on chairs to reach the table – _

_– unpaved streets in Lima, when you fall on the ground, the dirt stings the cut – _

_– an incredulous look after a kiss – _

She heard the Marshal, "60% to full handshake."

Then, something tripped. In her or him, it's something she'll never be sure of.

The AI's voice filled the Conn-Pod, "Handshake disengaged. Would you like to try again?"

They stripped off the suits and both vomited in the locker room. Chuck punched a locker and Mako washed her mouth. They looked at one other. They blamed each other and themselves and Mako thought, _maybe they can drift with all the hate they seemed to be sharing_.

By lunchtime, everybody knew.

Mako went in the simulator, for one, and added three drops and three kills to her tally. Chuck, as far as she knew, punched a few more lockers and got into a fight with a LOCCENT operator.

As she prods the Marshal's shoulder for a point, all she remembers from the drift was the taste of ash and the desperation to find a mother.

Was the memory hers?

* * *

Is it clear this is mostly me trying to flesh out head-cannons yet? And the plot is basically, I NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED BETWEEN ONIBABA AND MAKO SWEEPING RALEIGH OFF HIS FEET. Which, I think is an extremely underrated genre. And, again, if anyone needs a girl crying over Pacific Rim on their shoulders, hit me up on tumblr!


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